1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for a telephone relay system that provides communication between parties.
2. Description of Related Art
Telephone relay systems may provide communication between parties where a first party is using a text terminal such as a teletype or personal computer and a second party is using a voice terminal such as a telephone station. A customer care agent, or communications assistant, may act as an intermediary between the first and second parties.
In such telephone relay systems, the first party begins a telephone relay process by dialing a special number on the text terminal to access the telephone relay system. The first party is then connected to the customer care agent. The customer care agent receives instructions from the first party to make a first call to a second party. When the second party answers, the customer care agent converts the text received from the first party's text terminal into voice for the second party to hear and converts the voice of the second party into text, which is directed to the first party's text terminal for the first party to read. At the end of the first call with the second party, the first party may request a second call to another second party and the same customer care agent makes the second call. This process continues until the first party decides to end the call with the customer care agent.
The first party may be charged only for the cost of the calls made to second parties and not for the customer care agent's services between these calls. Thus, there is a need to reduce the amount of time the customer care agent must spend to support the first party so that the cost of providing telephone relay system services may be reduced.